This week, the Obama administration issued the final waivers under the Child Soldier Prevention Act. The waivers will allow seven governments to continue to receive U.S. military assistance and weapons despite evidence of their recruitment and use of child soldiers. While this annual bureaucratic stroke of a pen flies under the radar, these waiver determinations mark a significant moment for the administration’s legacy on protecting children in conflict and promoting strong human rights standards.
The Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) is intended to leverage coveted U.S. military assistance and encourage governments to stop using children in combat. Signed into law in 2008, the CSPA took effect in 2010 and restricts U.S. military support to countries identified by the State Department as having recruited and used child soldiers in their national militaries or government-supported armed groups. If a country appears on the annual CSPA list, it may be ineligible to receive U.S. weapons and military assistance in the following fiscal year.
The president may, however, waive these prohibitions (in part or in full) in the name of U.S. “national interest” and allow offending countries to continue to receive arms and assistance despite their recruitment and/or use of child soldiers. For the last six years, the Obama administration has justified the use of “national interest” waivers to support broader security concerns including counterterrorism and efforts to fight non-state armed groups.
This year, 10 countries are identified on the CSPA list: Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Iraq, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The Obama administration granted full waivers to Burma, Iraq and Nigeria, partial waivers to the DRC, Somalia, South Sudan and Rwanda and did not waive the prohibitions on Sudan, Syria and Yemen — three countries that are not slated to receive any U.S. military assistance or arms sales.
In effect, these waivers will allow at least $273 million in military assistance to flow to countries known to be using child soldiers. This has been a consistent pattern of behavior for the Obama administration. Over the past six years, the administration has provided more than $1.2 billion in military assistance and arms sales to the 13 countries identified for recruiting and using child soldiers.
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Many of the countries identified by the State Department this year have appeared on the CSPA list since its inception, with five reappearing on the list every year since 2010. Nearly all of these countries have received either full or partial waivers at some point in time. Indeed, this year, the president waived only the assistance it was planning to provide and prohibited assistance that was never slated to be delivered. Over the past six years, the administration has withheld just over $56 million in military assistance and $5 million in arms sales to violating countries, or less than five percent of funds that would have been restricted had it not used waivers. It is not difficult to prohibit assistance that was never going to provided.
This last round of waiver determinations has cemented Obama’s legacy on preventing the use of child soldiers worldwide. Although there have been some positive changes under the CSPA — some countries such as Chad have been removed from the CSPA list when they have eliminated the use of child soldiers — overall the Obama administration has been loathe to leverage the full weight of the CSPA. Rather than using the CSPA as a carrot to encourage governments to stop recruiting and using child soldiers, the United States has largely given a free pass to some of the world’s worst violators.
Indeed, in the midst of the brutality of the conflict in South Sudan, where forces on all sides of the conflict continue to use children to wage war, the United States has waived Juba’s sanctions in part based on the justification that South Sudanese forces will continue to take part in the hunt for soldiers in the Lord’s Resistance Army — a group infamous for its systematic kidnapping and use of child soldiers. The irony of supporting one government that is using child soldiers to hunt down a group that has relied upon child soldiers to wage war for decades seems to be lost on the Obama administration, which has waived CSPA prohibitions every year for South Sudan and permitted the country to receive $120 million in U.S. military assistance and more than $20 million in U.S. arms sales.
During the course of its term, the Obama administration has missed a vital opportunity to ensure that the CSPA carries more weight than the paper it’s written on. The administration’s habitual use of full or partial national interest waivers has, in effect, voided much of the act’s potential impact to help improve the lives of children around the world. Instead of incentivizing countries to demobilize child soldiers and prevent further recruitment into military and/or paramilitary groups, the administration repeatedly sent a message to violating countries that they could continue to use child soldiers with little to no consequence.
The United States has a powerful tool to stop the internationally condemned practice of child soldiers, but due to political considerations — notably the importance given to providing assistance to help support counterterrorism efforts — the CSPA has fallen short of its potential.
The United States has an opportunity to be a leader in efforts to limit and ultimately prevent the use of child soldiers. Although the CSPA is not a panacea to stop the horrific practice of child soldiers, it is a tool that should be used by the next administration to promote change in government behavior and protect the most vulnerable. Children around the world deserve better.
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Obama’s Lost Opportunity on Child Soldiers originally appeared on usnews.com
